Sexual activity begins at a young age due to poverty or a lack of information. One estimate says 1.25 million people in this southern African nation of 19 million have AIDS (see «AIDS Project Overhauling Mozambique´s Health System,» (http://www.zenit.org/english/archive/0107/ZE010702.htm).
The National Council for Combating AIDS (NCCA) reported that the virus is also transmitted to babies at birth or in breast-feeding.
The NCCA strongly advocates the message of sexual abstinence, since the «principal means of prevention, among youth, is to retard the initiation of sexual activity.»
